On the Calculation of Volume I

We have always had need of time together. We are not one of those couples that has to have time apart, to miss and rediscover one another, to go away then be reunited in a collision of love. Distance, leave-taking and reunions are not what bind us to one another. For us it has always been about the days together, day after day, night after night, again and again. There is a tension that grows between us, a force field that intensifies as the day goes on until often, after a long day together, we will suddenly start to undress one another.

Our love has always been microscopic. It is something in the cells, some molecules, some compounds outside our control, which collide in the air around us, sound waves that form unique harmonies when we speak, it happens at the atomic level or even that of smaller particles. There are no precipices or distances in our relationship. It is something else, a sort of cellular vertigo, a sort of electricity or mag-netism, or maybe it's a chemical reaction, I don't know. It is something that occurs in the air between us, a feeling that is heightened when we are in each other's company. Maybe we are a weather system — condensation and evaporation: we are together, we look at one another, we touch one an-other, we condense, we come together, we make love, we fall asleep, we wake and revert to our strange bond, a quiet weather system with no natural disasters.

I sometimes have the urge to transcend the distance, I feel like getting up and opening the door and ruining everything, disrupting our rhythm. But I know that if I went in there the distance between us would grow even greater and I don't go. I do not go in and toss 151 days onto the floor in a heap between us. I don't go into that room and try to drag him out of his pattern. I live with the distance. I sit on the bed and read. I know that he will soon come closer again. Why would I toss 151 days onto the floor in a heap when I can have this very short distance?